Storage Forecasting | SQL Sentry

Accurately Predicting Storage Capacity Is Challenging

Predicting server storage capacity is often difficult, forcing data professionals to scramble to address critical business interruptions because of insufficient disk storage. Most storage forecasting methods use simple trend forecasting, which is not accurate and will not prevent over-capacity incidents. Constantly changing workloads make planning for future storage needs difficult.

The challenges in accurately predicting when systems will run out of storage space can have significant consequences for organizations, slowing data delivery or bringing business operations to a halt.

SolarWinds SQL Sentry Storage Forecasting Removes the Capacity-Planning Guesswork

Storage Forecasting in SentryOne 18.5 applies machine learning algorithms to forecast daily usage for all storage volumes across servers, enabling data professionals to proactively manage compute resources. The algorithms analyze workloads, fine-tune disk capacity forecasts, and provide intelligent reporting that can help prevent system downtime.

Daily Usage Forecasts

Storage Forecasting produces daily usage forecasts for all logical disks, customizes a forecast for each volume, and analyzes previous forecasts on a daily basis. Over time, the system learns the unique workload of each volume and fine-tunes its forecasts accordingly.

Windows Disk Forecast Report

By default, the Windows Disk Forecast report shows all volumes in the monitored environment that are forecast to run out of space within 180 days. You can customize the report to generate forecasts for up to three years into the future. You can generate a report for all volumes on a particular server, and you can include a capacity planning forecast so that you can take measures to ensure you’ll meet your future storage needs.

SentryOne_Advanced_Storage_Forecasting_Windows_Disk_Forecast_Shadowed

(Open in new tab for larger view)

(Open in a new tab for larger view)

Disk Space Tab

By clicking on a logical disk in the Disk Space tab, you’ll see a new chart that provides a history of available free disk space for the volume for the past 180 days. If a forecast is available, you’ll also get the next forecasted 180 days of consumption.

The chart displays historical data and forecasted free disk space remaining with a prediction interval: The further into the future you predict, the wider the prediction interval. The chart also shows the forecasted Resource Exhaustion Date.

Alerting for Forecasted Disk Exhaustion

Beyond viewing daily reports of forecasted storage capacity, you can customize Advisory Conditions to receive alerts if any volumes are forecast to run out of space in the next 90 days, or if a forecasted exhaustion date changes by more than a month earlier than previously predicted. Knowing when the forecasted exhaustion date changes help you identify new database deployments or workload changes that could signal accelerated database growth.

Predict Storage Space with Confidence

SQL Sentry Storage Forecasting applies machine learning to provide the most accurate predictions of future storage capacity available today. Data professionals and IT managers can now proactively address the problem of insufficient disk storage space to prevent business interruptions and keep database systems running at peak performance.

Ready to end your database performance problems?

Download a SQL Sentry trial

See for yourself how SQL Sentry can help you achieve optimal database performance.

Schedule a SQL Sentry demo

Learn more about how SQL Sentry can help you troubleshoot and prevent database performance problems. Register to attend a public demo or schedule a one-on-one session.

Learn more about SQL Sentry

Discover how you can quickly find and fix SQL Server performance problems with SQL Sentry, which delivers proven scalability, easy-access dashboards, and visibility across your entire database environment.